Aries at Dawn

ARIES AT DAWN

By William Amerman

Copyright 2005 by William Amerman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Published by: William Amerman

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1

You never expected justice from a company, did you? They neither have a soul to lose, nor a body to kick. - Sydney Smith (1771-1845; English writer, clergyman)

He cut the headlights. Rolled the truck through darkness to the far end of the highway rest-stop. Wind gusted out of the night into a line of pine trees on his right. He sat still in his truck, thinking, then tugged up the sleeve of his rain parka. Checked the luminescent watch face. The second hand seemed connected directly to his pulse. Like winding up a spring.

He exhaled through shaky lungs and snapped a half-smoked cigarette out the window. Kept his foot on the brake but shifted the truck into first gear to be ready. A fresh breeze blew in a spatter of rain. Fat drops rang on the hood. The darkness turning freshly alive with falling movement. Like nature gave a twitch of sympathy for the bastard driving toward him somewhere out there. He was not religious but he knew people who were. You would not have to be very devout to say a prayer at this moment, he thought. Instead he reached for another cigarette. A prayer for the lungs. He couldn’t find his lighter though.

A distant flash sliced through the dark and interrupted his primitive search for fire. The light reflected off the interior of his truck, rounded the highway turn and resolved quickly into a slash of headlights. The mammoth shape of an eighteen wheeler boomed past, dragging a double set of trailers behind it. Intensity radiated from the rig. The rain fell harder and as he watched all that rolling steel, doubt took a good healthy grip on his soul.

What had seemed a promising idea on a phone call 8 hours earlier this evening, had seemed a reasonable idea 3 hours earlier on the drive out, and had seemed like, well, a workable idea 5 minutes ago, now held all the potential of a failed physics equation. Ah, yes. Inertia. Ha, cough, ha. Yes. With a capital I and rolling on a whole screaming bunch of Goodyear radial re-treads.

Grimacing in the face of this lopsided equation he lifted his feet off the brake and clutch. Gunned it out of the rest-stop exit and took a sharp left onto the shell-paved emergency vehicle cross-over. Rolled through grit up onto smooth wet hissing blacktop, completing the U-turn 1000 yards or so behind the tractor-trailer rig. Take it easy. Troll along in third. Let him get up to the traffic light. Timing would be everything. Ok. Back up to speed. With his lips he pulled another cigarette from the pack. Glanced down on the seat beside him for the missing lighter but saw only the dead white shape of his previous unlit cigarette. Quite out of his mind, he realized. On the seat where the lighter should have been, gun metal gleamed black, freshly oiled in the red reflection of his dash lights. The sight made his stomach cramp.

He gave up again on the Zippo, reached over and popped in the truck’s cigarette lighter. Eyes fixed straight ahead at fast-approaching tail lights in the distance that glowed in the dark like the eyes of a waiting dragon.

***

Twenty-five seconds later the highway traffic light flipped from red to green, waving on its wire in the wind. The big semi coasted through the intersection without stopping, wet brown fiberglass skin glistening faint green from the traffic light. The windshield wipers scraped another filmy smear across his vision. Impossible black weather beat against the glass. Thunder crashed bouncing through the rain.

Passed wholly under the traffic light David Floyd wondered what had caused them to go green on their own. Normally they defaulted red on the highway side. The town one mile up the road intended that drivers get used to slow speed for the 4 crossroads that constituted its presence on either side of the highway for half a mile.

He debated pulling over. The safety of himself and the rig against the urgency of the two long gray trailers riding behind him. Two trailers at 100 percent. 2,800 packages crammed floor to ceiling, front to back. A wind gust pounded cold rain through his open window, hit the full trailers behind him and jerked the steering wheel like the tail of a snake in his hands. As he corrected steering, he imagined swinging into the Austin trailer yard 30 minutes or so late.

The group of people who would be standing on the concrete tarmac waiting for him. Rain or no rain. A mixture of ties and shorts, supervisors and poor college student box humpers pulling in 8 or 10 bucks an hour. That didn’t bother him. The supervisors were an over-caffeinated clan of excitable cheerleading monkeys. The haggard state of the box humpers, so mangy and sweaty by 7am that sometimes their boots squished as they scampered into the back of fresh trailers, filled his tired heart with happiness. Seemed like one final justice before they graduated and became white-collar assholes who would forever look down on the honest race of truck drivers.

No, it would be the eyes of his fellow drivers that would burn the most. At this time of the morning guys would be finished with their paperwork. Already changed out of their driving uniforms. Most would have already headed home, but a lazy few would still be standing at the windows of the dispatch control tower, sipping coin-machine coffee out of paper cups. Chewing over fishing, women, boats. Watching Floyd pull in late. Amused at the sight of the goddamned non-unionized Austin trailer-yard driver, Claxton, standing with his skinny white legs poking down from his filthy blue shorts. Waiting beside the elevated row of phones where Floyd would have to give over control of his rig to the guy.

Because the union had caved on the last contract and if you were over thirty minutes late back to the yard you had to give up your rig when you hit the yard gates and called in to the dispatch tower. Even the drivers who despised Claxton as traitor to the union cause had to admit he could pop trailers on and off Unload doors twice as fast as any regular driver.

Still Claxton almost never had a chance to take a rig at the gate. Drivers didn’t mind so much if Claxton took trailers they already parked in the yard themselves. That was just efficiency. But drivers would risk their trucks, cargo and sometimes fellow highway travelers to keep from giving up control of their rig at the gate. To give up your rig before you had parked the trailers yourself was like letting some guy bring home the girl you’d brought to the dance.

It also didn’t help that Claxton dressed out of an old Cheech and Chong movie. Long stringy hair in a bandanna. Weird Middle Eastern music crackling in the background of the radio calls from his cab. The whole package of the man was an overt offence to the right-wing, gun-loving driver corps, who funny enough still voted over 90% Democrat because of the union thing.

The windows started to fog again. The defrost was not helping. The wipers were just rhythmic decoration. The mechanic who had signed off on both repairs last night was the focus of a vast hatred blooming in David Floyd’s chest.

He shifted, swallowed frustration and reached out to wipe at the front window with the same dirty glove he had used to hitch up the back trailer to the dolly 4 hours ago in the San Angelo trailer yard. He managed to open a crescent slice of visibility that he could see through if he hunched down. He bent his aching, numb and road-weary spine to peer through the small clear patch of windshield. Settled in like a unionized hunchback, he one-handed the top off the thermos beside him and took a shot of cold coffee. Resolved to think warm thoughts. Started by planning the mechanic’s bludgeoning.

Far behind, pale glow headlights popped up on the crest of a hill then disappeared behind the next. He finished the cold coffee and reminded his road-weary mind to keep it in one lane for the next couple of miles. Checked the watch. Another hour and a half and he'd be in bed. He might even forget the complaint against the mechanic. Too much paperwork at this time of the morning.

***

Dorothy Cobb turned the school bus off the highway down another unpaved road. The bus bucked. A branch scraped her side window like nails on chalkboard. She hadn't seen the hole in the road. The bus jerked back out into the middle of the two lanes. She pulled over fifty feet later. Her hands shook as she pulled the door lever.

Hello Tamara. She forced herself to greet calmly the children tramping mud and leaves into her bus. She crossed her arms over her chest. Hello Nathan, she said and received the normal obvious stare. Please sit in the back row today. I don’t want you even talking to Bradly today. Nathan nodded sullenly. Shuffled in and sat next to Bradly.

She pulled the door lever shut and tried not to compare her own children to the unruly, hopelessly rural children she gathered each morning in her bus. All children were the product of their environments. All God's children. And as long as they rode in her bus they were her children.

***

David Floyd leaned over the big steering wheel and checked the sky again. Rain had resumed, slashing horizontally against his windshield. He flicked on the dome light and checked his watch. The sun had supposedly been over the horizon for five minutes. He sighed. It would be like this the rest of the way in. Headlights emerged behind him at the peak of the hill he had just topped.

Damn, he breathed, watching in the rearview mirror. Crazy Texas bastards.

The lights disappeared again as he passed the crest of the next hill. Floyd steered down the incline, glancing from the road to the side view mirror, watching. The headlights appeared quickly. They seemed to hang in the air at the top of the hill, yellow globes against the backdrop of splattered gray clouds, then they dropped. Streaked down at him.

He steered halfway onto the shoulder and flashed his brake lights as a precaution to the idiot. The headlights screamed up and past. A dark shape behind the steering wheel. Gravel from the shoulder sprayed the underside of Floyd's truck cab and he watched the quick switch from teardrop yellow headlights to shadowy steel body of a light import truck. The glowing orange point of a cigarette tip, then red tail-lights shot past like an airplane down a runway. It cruised down the slant into the valley between the hills then rose up the next hill like a Japanese import ghost pulled into the sky.

Goddamn. Over a hundred, he muttered, swinging back off the shoulder up into the right lane, feeling the bump travel front to rear under his tires. Something vaguely familiar about the passenger truck. He didn't really care how fast the natives drove as long as they kept to their own side of the road.

Driving the hours after bars closed and men traded barstools for driver’s seats--not thinking much of the difference between the two--had taught him not to be too proud about giving them both lanes if they wanted them.

***

Dorothy noticed the dirt road had been recently sprinkled with shell. The shell made the water run more or less to the sides and left most of the road manageable. It also made the sides quagmires and Dorothy Cobb kept her eyes firmly on the road. She had made all but the last of her scheduled stops. The last stop was still a couple hundred yards away, after the dirt road intersected the highway again. She looked up in the mirror, cocked to keep an eye on her children.

Like moths hatching from sluggish larvae the children had discarded their sleepy shells. Her own children were so well-behaved that she had little practice in disciplinary action. She cringed as one of the little boys threw his lunch pail across three rows of seats. Another boy caught it and sent it flying back.

She was about to call back a lecture concerning proper school bus conduct when the steering wheel went soft in her hands. Horrified, she looked down from the mirror. Outside visibility was barely five feet but it was obvious the right front wheel was digging into the deep mud on the right side of the road. Her breath caught in her lungs. She was running off the road!

She braked hard and spun the weightless steering wheel back to the left. Startled cries came from the back of the bus then screams of delight as the children crowded to the windows and saw the mud.

The right wheel dug against the side of the shell for another five feet before it popped back onto the road. The bus lurched up like a tank. The children groaned. Accidents were much more exciting. Mrs. Cobb's hand shook as she held it firmly up in the aisle. Had a tire popped? How would she ever change a tire on something this big?

Sit down you little beasts! she screamed. Shame bloomed on her cheeks and she hoped they hadn’t heard the her. Sit down right now you children! She continued, still resisting the sudden urge to stop the bus, walk back down the aisle and slap every last one of them right into Saturday. Especially that insolent Nathan Daniels who stared at nothing but her chest when going in or out of her bus. She checked. He was creeping back up the aisle of the bus, fist cocked, towards the unsuspecting head of Bradly.

Nathan! Back to your seat! She watched as he actually obeyed her. Ok. Two deep breaths and a conscious relaxation of her shoulders. Calm down. They couldn't help how they were raised and she resumed feeling ashamed at how she was representing educated, non-rural people to the children.

It's simply not safe, children, she called back in a forced milder tone. It's simply not safe, she repeated to herself and slowed down for a careful turn onto the highway then the long simple straight shot to the school.

***

The man in the import passenger truck took a deep breath and tapped his brakes. Then he down-shifted to third, to second. Came to a stop and executed a neat three point turn-around in the middle of the highway, wishing like hell he’d thought of a better way to do this. In fact, was he really doing this?

His truck sat unnaturally still, facing the wrong way on a road built for incessant motion. Idling. Rain drummed on the roof. And he waited. Waited for a tractor-trailer rig to pop out of the rain. Directly at him? Maybe a little like Nolan Ryan’s catchers felt through the years, watching him huge and glaring up there on the mound. Knowing that whatever smoke the big Texan was going to bring, he’d have to put himself, body, soul and jockstrap, in front of it. He thought of the chances. Death, mutilation, disfigurement, terror. All words they might use in the papers tomorrow to describe the next few moments.

Maybe the guy in the rig would be looking out his window. Maybe messing with his radio. No assurances at all he would see the headlights facing out at him like pathetic twin fireflies in this storm. At least not in time to steer clear of him.

He put a nervous finger on the high beam switch. Checked his gas gauge. Maybe he should lean out and get off a few shots with the pistol at first sight of the rig? Take out the windshield? Wake the bastard right up with a few safety-glass fragments imbedded in his cheek? Reinforce that turning instinct.

With his right hand he tightened the seatbelt up from across his lap over the shoulder. Debated silently the wisdom of that for a second. Yeah, that’s what you want to do. Strap yourself in tight when expecting fifty tons of steel to roll over you. Did they have the jaws of life out here? Or would some rusted-out wrecker from Bastrop show up in an old Armadillo tank-top with a crowbar?

He looked up and tried not to think, feeling worse and worse about things with every passing moment. Slow-moving red lights suddenly appeared at the top of the hill. Red? he thought.

***

Floyd drove almost blindly up the next hill. The valley on the other side cupped a maelstrom. Like driving into the solid surface of a lake perched up on its side. Lightning cracked close-by and a strong wind blew the rain in sheets across the road. Hail pellets cracked into the metal and glass of his truck cab. Visibility less than ten feet with the broken wipers and he decided that load or no load, overtime or not, obscene locker pin-ups and piss-poor record be damned, he was getting off the highway. Hell, Claxton could come and get the trailers from out here for all he cared now.

A flash of high beamed headlights suddenly poked at him through the sloshing sheets of rain in the right lane. His lane. His heart lodged in his chest like an iron spike. Owing that his intention had been to get off the road anyway his reaction was almost immediate.

He slammed down the clutch and jammed the shifter into a low gear position. Remembered to stay clear of the brakes. He popped the clutch. Felt the first sick loss of traction. Too low of a gear. Oh God. Don’t roll over. Don’t roll over. He stepped on the clutch again. Steering wheel hard right with an instinctive mirror glance to check the trailer line behind him. Got it into another gear. The right front wheel bounced off onto the rough shoulder and the trailers started to rock and slide sideways on the pavement. Still too low of a gear ratio. The sudden torque of the lower gear had caused the wheels to lock up. Screw it. He stomped both feet on the brakes. Gravity, friction and several different lines of inertia battled over control of the rig.

He glanced down below the driver's door where he should be sliding into the stalled truck, but the idiot was backing out of his crash line. The left corner of Floyd’s rig flicked almost about half a millimeter into the driver’s side door of the asshole, then he was past him and the spine-wrenching jerk as the trailers finally followed the tractor onto the shoulder. He quick-checked the mirrors again and saw the bump had actually moved the trailers more in line with the cab. A gleam of red on his right vision periphery. He looked back up to where he should have been looking all along and threw the steering wheel back to the left, useless, his screams loud, alien to his own ears in the truck cab.

***

Dorothy Cobb exhaled relief and activated the flashing red caution lights as she turned from the shell road onto the shoulder of the highway. The last four children would be waiting fifty yards down, halfway to the bottom of the large hill. She wanted them to see her approaching through the heavy rain. She wasn't supposed to turn on the lights until stopped but she had little patience this morning after the tire incident.

Rain whipped crazily across the front of the bus and she slowed to crawling speed. After ten yards, she stopped the bus, keeping an eye on the side mirror for traffic as she pulled open the door. Four wet children trudged in out of the dark and up the steps.

When the children were settled in the back, she switched off the red flashing lights and started the bus down the shoulder. Then, the strangest thing. Headlights were pointing at her, barely visible in the distance. Stopped on her side of the highway. She shook her head. Rural people with no respect for the law. Probably heading back for his missed turn-off. She decided to hurry past it on the shoulder.

Two seconds later, glancing into the side view mirror, she saw different headlights. Behind her. Approaching. She flicked on her red loading lights. The headlights resolved into a sliding tractor trailer rig breaking through the rain and pounding hail. It was swerving to miss the passenger truck. She sucked in a breath. My God, she heard the whisper from her lips. With nightmare speed the only three vehicles on the highway moved together like three magnets.

Out of some misplaced instinct she slammed a sneakered foot hard on the brake pedal but this only added to the disparity of speed between the two vehicles. The right front of the sliding tractor crashed into the rear of her bus, riding up the rear bumper. Crushing.

Mrs. Cobb felt her foot back off the brake pedal as the truck impacted and the bus accelerated and moved out from under her. The bodies in the bus were still moving at about ten miles per hour while the bus and its seats almost instantly accelerated out from underneath them to forty-five. This meant Mrs. Cobb's head hit the head-rest at about thirty-five miles per hour; like being dropped on her head from a height of fifty-six feet. The head socked against the vinyl headrest then rebounded, pulling her body halfway over the steering wheel, the head into the windshield. A bulge accompanied by a bright red splatter mark splintered the shatter-proof glass. At this point, though, all drivers were superfluous to the equation.

Floyd, still conscious, watched as the back rows of the bus disappeared under the wheels of his tractor. All controls in front of him useless. His body felt about to explode from the adrenaline dump. Legs twitched uncontrollably under the steering wheel. The trailers finally rolled. The wheels came off the road and pulled the bus and tractor over onto their sides. The whole tangled mess slid off the shoulder. Hissed into the wet grass, trailing broken pieces of metal, plastic and white friction smoke. An endless slide. No sense of slowing down until right at the end.

Everything finally came to a stop some one hundred and ninety feet later. Like astonished applause, the hail intensified its metallic beating.

***

The passenger truck, further up the highway, stopped reversing. Gears clicked and tires spun briefly for traction. It drove quickly back up the road to stop where the trailers and bus had left the shoulder. Hazards lights flicked active.

The driver reached onto the seat beside him with a shaking hand. Shouldered out into the rain. Ran on stiff legs from the truck. The wreckage was not visible from the highway so he followed the scraped furrows dug in the grass where it looked like an enterprising and desperate Russian had tried to land an Aeroflot Tupolev without landing gear.

Five steps down and he saw the first packages. God. Boxes everywhere. Crumpled, crushed and muddy. Already the cardboard splotched dark from the rain. His mind twisting, frozen in shock. Where had the school bus come from? Of all things to roll down the highway. He reached the main wreckage in ten seconds, taking care not to slip in the mud where the grass had been scraped clear. He stopped, looking at the school bus as though he had never seen one. Something wearing brown hush-puppies lay half in and half out of one of the school bus windows. Not moving. Indecision punctuated by pain creased his face and he looked away from it. His eyes closed and he breathed raggedly, standing very still in the rain. His left hand clenched into a fist, rainwater ran over white knuckles. The rain and hail beat tight against twisted metal. He opened his eyes and started for the bus. Then his face hardened. He stopped, turned to the big semi cab.

It was on its side, driver's side up. The cab had disengaged from the bus somewhere near the end of the long slide. The windshield of the cab was missing. He stepped over to it and leaned in. The hood warmed his left shoulder. Floyd hung from his lap belt, legs trapped under the crushed steering wheel. He reached up and felt for a pulse on Floyd’s neck. Then he reached down and began to rummage through the mess of papers lying against the passenger door.

He found what he was looking for and stuffed the bright yellow, heavily taped envelope under his parka. He stood back, steadying himself with one hand against the hood. One hand went beneath his parka and brought out the pistol. He pressed it against David Floyd's temple.

His finger tightened on the curved steel trigger. He stopped. Looked at the face he was about to destroy. With a sudden metallic creak the truck shifted on the slope and the bullet exploded beside Floyd's head into the passenger seat. The spent cartridge clicked off somewhere in the cab and the shooter slipped as the hood of the trailer nudged him like a playful dog, sending him sliding into the wet grass ten feet further down the embankment. He got halfway to his feet quickly like a crab righting itself and crouched there for a moment. All that mass perched just over his head. The next whisper of an angel sending it down onto him. A scream pierced the blowing rain.

It probably came from the wreckage of the bus but with all the wind the terrible sound swirled around him and seemed to surround him. He eased out of the truck’s potential fall line. His parka heavy with mud. He waited for the scream to break off, weighing the chances, feeling for the odds of another chance at Floyd. He couldn’t afford witnesses. Weighed that need against not thinking he could stand contributing more butchery to this scene than he already unintentionally had.

New voices, startled, like wild animals in pain, joined into the original scream. Wet small moans that sent shivers over his forearms.

He eased around the upended truck and trailers, taking care not to touch the truck and staying out of sight of the bus. He finally cleared the last trailer. Followed the spilled mass of packages. Clutched the yellow, taped envelope tight under his parka and jogged back up the slippery path to the highway. His hands were dirty, his throat swollen and sore. He tucked the filthy parka under the spare tire in the bed of the truck then got into the cab. Despite the incredible urge to flee, he sat still. How much of his humanity was he leaving back there in the mud of human and mechanical wreckage? What kind of human drove away from children in pain? He banished all thoughts. Started the truck. He drove away.

Chapter 2

So. Marianne will cover wrap-up for all areas today. Jeff grinned down at her. She’s been doing great on her memorization tests, right Marianne?

Marianne grunted once, hunched over in her chair. Bobby leaned casually against the office wall in an appallingly obvious effort to see up her shorts. Bobby was his best loader and Jeff tried not to notice. Instead, he focused motivation out into the room like pumping dry ice through a fog machine. Beamed his special 4:15am smile down at their slack, pale faces from his perch on the M7 office planning desk.

A tough crowd. Eight University students. Walking dead from lack of sleep. An awful job he asked them to do. Well, ok. Maybe not awful in the sense of jumping on a grenade to save your platoon buddies, or hacking Russian coal out of a wall 500 feet below a leaky, gas-ridden lake. But no one was exploring the depths of humanity here, either. It was hours before dawn and it was all about boxes. Boxes and the trucks that would soon be stuffed with these boxes.

And that’s it. Oh wait. Before we get out there—

A horn blared into life, signifying a building-wide conveyor startup. 250 feet away, twenty unloaders had just scrambled up ladders like chimpanzees after fruit to dive into the huge feeder trucks parked out back of the building. Unload frenzy.

Travis has challenged us in a friendly package car loading competition, he said, hurrying. His slide vs. our slide. Whichever slide has highest numbers at the end of this week goes out for beer and pizza after work on Friday. Unified picks up the tab. He let that hang for a moment. Thought he detected the smallest gleam of interest from his group. He basked motionless in that rare glimmer for seconds.

So let’s get out there and kick ass today! he shouted, jarringly loud in the small office, once again embarrassed at the level of enthusiasm he was paid to exhibit for the act of loading boxes from a metal slide into package cars.

All his pre-loaders except Bobby sleepily pushed themselves up into a walking position. Bobby took one last sidelong look at Marianne, an expression on his face like a man leaving his family to sail to the New World, then hit the door like something shot out of a mobile missile launcher. Jeff watched them shuffle out, dismayed again at why he was so successful at motivating Bobby but none of the others.

Uh Jeff? a voice to his right.

Sympathy and apprehension hit him at the same time. Simon was his pickoff guy.

Man, I’m not sure I should have come back today, Simon said. Jeff noticed Simon was breathing shallowly. Almost panting. Already a faint sheen of sweat on his pale face. Oh god no.

You’ll be fine, Jeff said. He ducked his head out of the office to see if packages had made it out to their slide. Not yet. But any second. The first 75 seconds of package flow each morning was like a tidal wave because the goddamned unloaders wanted to get a head start on their numbers and primed the belts for 5 minutes before official startup. Jeff usually made Bobby stand up in the pick-off spot with Simon for the first five minutes to help him handle the first wave. No sign of Bobby up there now, though. Goddamnit, if he was out there chatting up Marianne. . . .

I don’t know what it is, Simon panted, crouching a bit. But I’ve got to go every 30 minutes . . . some sort of weird biological alarm clock.

Go?

You know. GO. Still got that nausea, too. Jesus do you think it might be dysentery? Can you get that shit just from eating Tex-Mex food?

Ah, Jeff said. He wished he could just say—in fact he almost said but didn’t, ‘you’re right buddy. You’ve been sick for a week because while you were out at the lake last week some ferocious amoeba probably crawled up your ass and fathered 30 generations. Get yourself to bed and stay there until you feel better.’ But he couldn’t. The Business did not slow down for illness and The Business needed the services of Jeff’s pickoff this morning.

So Jeff searched his brain for empathetic, medically sound, non-potentially-litigious advice. Something caring and helpful but something for which he wouldn’t get sued in four months.

Drink plenty of water, he managed and glanced out the window again. Gratified to see Bobby high up in the pickoff slot, ripping off a quick set of pull-ups from a support beam as he waited for the first boxes. Jeff’s stomach twitched